CKSource

The submission round for the CKEditor 4 Skin Contest is over and we have our finalists!

But first, we would like to thank everybody for their wonderful skin designs! We had some very nice entries all around. We appreciate all the hard work and devotion our community put into their creations. Our community can expect a strong set of skins to choose from for CKEditor 4.

We’re going Monochrome!

We’d like to inform the community that we are going monochrome! The top entries are all monochromatic in design (it seems to be the trend nowadays) so whoever wins, CKEditor 4’s new default skin will have a monochrome look.

Rest assured we haven’t completely closed the door on color. As you will see in our comments for each finalist, including some color is important to us. In the future, third-party plugins will probably include colored icons, so we would prefer a skin that doesn’t make it hard for additional plugins to look nice in the toolbar.

And the finalists are…

So, after careful deliberation, we have our top 3 finalists! They are: Moono, Ozone and Silver.

Moono:

A very professional looking skin. The icons are also custom made and look sharp. The entire skin has synergy but that can be problematic for custom plugin designers trying to adapt their icons to such a distinct look. It’s also black and we would prefer having a light gray skin.

GitHub Page: https://github.com/paranoida/ckeditor-moono-theme

Ozone:

Another great skin. Everything about Ozone is polished. It’s monochromatic and stylish but also somewhat color-friendly. The icon set is the only negative; it’s made from a collection of third-party icons.

GitHub Page: https://github.com/sstur/ckeditor-ui

Silver:

One of the things that appealed to us in Silver is the skin’s potential to play well with color (it’s not too unique) and the simplicity of icons. Even though they still need some work the icons are custom made, which is a plus.

GitHub Page: https://github.com/oleq/silver

So those are the issues we are facing while selecting the winner. We are in the process of getting in touch with the finalists for additional information and possible design modifications. Comments are appreciated so click on each toolbar preview to visit the skin’s contest page and give us your feedback.

The winner will be announced on Friday, October 5^th, 2012.

Again, we thank everybody for participating. You all did a great job!

Stay tuned for the result.

EDIT (05 Oct 2012): The winner has been selected and all finalists have been contacted about the results. Some legal formalities will take a few days to resolve. We will not make any public announcements until the middle of next week. Please be patient and keep tuning in!